Science
Remember that famous “I want to believe” poster of an alien Spacecraft on fox Mulder’s office in the famed
TV “The x-files’’? The classic question of “Are we alone in this
universe” has fascinated us for generation and all the mystery that shrouds in the possibility of life on other planets has simply fueled our curiosity in extra- terrestrial existence. As an effort to find definitive answers to this question which is old as time itself that whether Earth is unique or there are others like it out there, NASA, on march 6,2009, has launched the Kepler Spacecraft from the cape Canaveral Air force station, Florida; the mission objective is to discover Earth like planets
orbiting other stars. This 600 million dollar project is not just a scientific mission but a historic one as well because for the next 3.5 years Kepler will observe over 100,000 stars around Cygnus and Lyra Constellations of the milky way and identify the true Earth analogs that is Earth-sized planets orbiting stars like that of our good old sun at distances where surface water and hence life could certainly exist. This mission is of great significance for the human race because according to William Borucki’s worlds, the mission’s principle science investigator, ‘Even if we find no planet like Earth that by itself would be profound. It would indicate that we are probably alone in the galaxy.
The size of the known universe is spectacularly and inconceivably vast.
In fact, ther are more planets out there than all the sand grains combined in all the beaches of Earth! that is indeed quite a number and the universe that houses them is' midbogglingly big ' As the movie the hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy neatly puts. it was yhe ancient belief that Earth was the centre of the universe but it is now scientifically acknowledged that Earth in not even at the centere of the solar system.